


Running All The Red Lights, Speeding For The Finish Line

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Ocean’s (Movies), Ocean’s 8 (2018), Ocean’s Eight, Ocean’s Eight (2018), ocean’s 8
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 05:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14927861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: As it is with every con man and con woman, they have a right hand. Usually, they meet in casinos, where cons and sleights of hands are so usual that the absence of which could be considered a lot more suspicious.Debbie Ocean meets her right hand in a similar way, but not quite. And her partner never started out as just her right hand in pulling off cons and heists.Alternatively: Three Times Debbie Ocean First Met Lou Miller, And One Time She Didn’t





	Running All The Red Lights, Speeding For The Finish Line

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic (as well as the inspiration of this fic) comes from the lyrics of one of the songs on Debbie’s Spotify playlist (https://open.spotify.com/user/cc8hzlxj092z9czuxgqlae81y/playlist/72KxlBJ6EFVC9C34nVDwuU?si=osUpiU3ATPe1GILUFPjSDg). The song is called First Time by Kygo ft. Ellie Goulding.

“So?” A drag, then smoke comes out of pale lips in clouds. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

The party is a few houses down. Never mind that. Debbie already got her share of partying, and it’s snug in the deepest reaches of her special pockets.

She knows she won’t get caught. She doubts they’ll even suspect her. It’s a party, with alcohol and weed in almost every corner of the place, mixing with the air more than oxygen, and there’s at least as many suspicious people there as there are people who’ll get blackout drunk or spend the night with a stranger somewhere in the upper rooms.

She’s young but she isn’t careless; she knows enough without her dad or her mom telling her what to do.

_“They just want you to be better. Better than now, so you could pull off things not even our most historic relative could manage.”_

She could do that herself. Despite her brother’s comforting words, she found she didn’t want to be an Ocean while having to walk in the shadows of everyone else.

She isn’t Danny’s sister, or her father’s daughter, or her mother’s daughter or her aunt’s niece or her grandfather’s granddaughter. She is Debbie, and she’d like to be known as that.

“Don’t you think I should be asking _you_ that question?” Debbie says, and she takes a swig of her nicked bottle of vodka with her eyes trained on the girl before her. About her age, blonde hair, silver eyes especially in the moonlight. “What with that accent and all?”

“Being racist now are we?” The girl smirks at her. Debbie cocks and eyebrow and gives the Australian an incredulous look. Racist?

“Well, if that’s what you want to call it.” Debbie shrugs, sliding to the base of the rooftop and sitting a little closer to the girl. Neither look away, all movements blending off into the background.

A drag and an exhale. “Honey, you better answer my question first before you expect me to answer yours.”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“Well, if that’s what you want to call it.” Silver eyes stare straight into hers, a smirk playing on pale lips. Debbie feels the corners of her lips lift the slightest bit, her mouth falling slightly agape. Who is this girl? How did the stars tonight lead them to exactly the same rooftop?

“What’s your name?” But Debbie knows no one is ever honest with that question, especially in her business. She asks it anyway, and wonders how this blonde is making her, bit by bit, break rules she’s never known to be anywhere other than written in her veins.

“You haven’t even answered my first question.”

“And what _is_ your first question, Aussie?” Debbie moves closer. She feels the nicked bills brush her thighs, the edge of a diamond ring bury into her hip.

“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Well,” Debbie says, taking another swig from the stolen bottle. “Maybe I was looking for a place where no one knew my name.”

“And why is that?”

Debbie smirks, her eyes meeting silver ones, her knees barely touching the girl’s.

“ _You_ haven’t answered _my_ first question.”

The girl smirks, and the night feels a little less heavy, the music a little farther now. The girl leans back, and Debbie feels like she’s leaning forward, maybe imperceptibly, maybe otherwise. The girl rests her elbows behind her, eyes trained to the night sky, more smoke billowing out of her pale lips.

“I moved here. Just a few weeks ago.” The girl flicks her eyes back to Debbie, and Debbie smiles.

“So what _is_ your name?” Debbie asks, and she’s not surprised when a warm palm finds her cheek, not surprised when pale, smoky lips keep only a hair’s breadth away from her alcohol-kissed ones. It’s as if they’d done this dance a thousand times though, and Debbie knows she can trust this girl, even if there’s no name or address or _anything at all_ , just existence and a moment and the fog of smoke and alcohol.

“You don’t need to know that, and neither do I care about finding out yours.”

The girl tastes like caramel and gasoline, like honey and leather, and Debbie finds she can’t quite figure out why she’s being so careful, being not at all haphazard when making out with strangers usually ends up as passionate moments leading up to someone coming undone and probably getting robbed.

They don’t progress, but the girl walks her to a bridge where they agree to part ways, because it’s better not to know where either lives, better to be as strange as strangers are, apart from rooftops and stolen kisses.

Debbie thinks those kisses weren’t stolen at all.

When she checks her pockets for her goods, she finds the ring missing, replaced instead by a simple but beautiful diamond necklace. She’s sure, in that moment, that the glimpse of green she saw peeking from the girl’s biker jacket was definitely the same thing she, herself, kept in the deepest reaches of her special pockets.

* * *

Debbie Ocean is bored.

So bored, that not even a plot with her brother could amuse her. And that would usually amuse her! She is so bored that she didn’t even want to spare an ounce of energy to snatch from the pocket of a man with his wallet _and_ phone just sticking out of his back pockets.

Where to go and what to do? Debbie finds herself roaming the city instead, just walking aimlessly, anywhere, everywhere, wherever her feet take her.

Her feet take her to follow the path of some train tracks, abandoning all caution whether some train might run her over or slam her into the walls ten feet away, or whether something else might come at her and decide to give her a piece of mind.

She expects it all. A truck, the apocalypse.

She doesn’t expect the answer that follows though.

The rev of a motorcycle makes her lift her gaze from the iron tracks, up to a figure moving out from behind the back of a green truck. The person pulls up on the handlebars, yanking the bike up. The wheels lift, the front first, and the figure becomes more than a shadow as the sunlight hits the helmet, a hint of blonde hair peeping from between the end of the helmet and the top of the biker jacket.

When the bike lands on the other side of the train tracks, Debbie feels the corners of her lips lift, notices the the sun somehow grew brighter, that the colors around her somehow grew more vibrant and the details much sharper.

Despite the the accelerating roar, the bike swerves and parks just across from Debbie, at the other side of the train tracks, and the familiar pale lips smirk.

Debbie thinks that smirk looks just as bright whether in moonlight or in sunlight.

“What are you doing here?” The woman asks her, shouting over the roar of the motorcycle.

“Nothing, just bored.” Debbie says, and it’s tempting to cross the tracks and close the distance, though she doesn’t quite know what’s so appealing nor why she isn’t giving into it. “Thought it would do me good to take a walk around town.”

The smirk turns into a smile.

“Come on, I’ll take you to a place I think you’d like.”

Debbie lifts an eyebrow, and her family’s history would tell her that meeting anyone twice, seemingly by chance, even if it’s after about five or six years, should be something to be suspicious about. But she decides that suspicion could take a backseat for today and that she’ll play along, whoever this aussie is. So she crosses the tracks with a barely suppressed smile, coming beside the woman soon enough.

The weight around her neck feels heavier with the woman’s eyes without a doubt on her.

“Here,” the woman says, chucking off the helmet and handing it to her. Blonde hair is tousled around carelessly, and silver eyes peer up at her. She holds the woman’s gaze, and she wonders how there seems to be a canyon to jump here when usually, there is only a few inches to close. “I bet you need this helmet more than I do.”

Debbie takes the helmet and puts it on. She swings a leg over the motorcycle and sits down, down behind the blonde aussie with hair now positively gleaming in the sunlight.

Debbie fits herself against the woman, slips her arms around the woman’s waist. It fits, it all fits, and she wonders if this is what it’s like to fit a five hundred piece puzzle together, with every hole filled and every part in its right place.

The woman looks back, with shades on now.

“Hold on.” The whisper is soft, but strong and smooth like velvet, and even when the motorcycle revs up, the sound is yet to get drowned in Debbie’s ears.

The world blurs around them. There is nothing but them, and the bike, and the wind whipping their hair this way and that. Debbie remembers sniffing the faintest scent of roses that night. Today, though, she smells lavenders.

She scoots closer.

They stop in an alley, considerably clean with red brick walls sizing up either side. The woman parks the bike opposite a door in the side of the building, a door which Debbie sizes up, scanning from top to bottom.

“Where are we? Where is this?”

When Debbie turns around, it’s to find the woman’s face just inches away from hers, the woman’s half-covered breasts almost rushing Debbie’s shoulder.

“Just a part of town I’ve come to love.” An extended arm. But Debbie’s eyes are focused on silver ones, and fair skin, and pale lips, with blonde hair framing such an ethereal face. They couldn’t tell her off for getting distracted though; she can still feel every inch of her body, every pocket she has, and she’s pretty sure none of which are being robbed as of the moment. The click of a lock. “Who knows, you might come to like it too.”

Debbie finds herself in a finely furnished apartment, one with a wide room in the middle and doors to rooms on the second floor. The second floor opens to the wide room, bannisters all that keeps from falling into the wide circle in the middle.

“And I’d think,” the woman says, walking off to the far right part of the wide room. “There should be a bar in this bit, and some more grandeur on the walls. Maybe a better rug.”

Debbie looks to the center of the room, where a simple rug lay beneath the sofas and table. She agrees, and nods.

“So,” the woman says, and Debbie’s head lifts to meet the woman’s gaze. “D’you like it?”

“I do.” Debbie says, though she hasn’t quite looked around yet, hasn’t quite taken it all in.

But something tells her she’ll like it anyway.

The woman smirks, but there’s a ghost of a smile underneath it that shows in those silver eyes. She swaggers over to Debbie, all laid-back shoulders and tilted-up chin, but with a full step, not quite a skip, not quite proud the way Debbie knows that kind of walk to be.

“Then be more enthusiastic about it.” The woman smiles at her, head cocked to the side. The woman stops just a few feet away from Debbie. Debbie cocks her head to the opposite side and smirks back, lifting an eyebrow.

“Who says I’m not enthusiastic about it?”

The woman shrugs. The sunlight doesn’t quite hit those eyes in here, but the silver shines nonetheless.

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re too silent and you sound a tad too distracted.”

“I’m not silent.” Debbie takes a step. And another. And another. “And I’m definitely not distracted.”

Brown meets silver. Silver? Or blue.

“Sure, honey.”

When the sound of footsteps from down the hall echo into the room, Debbie all but follows the woman out one of the windows, climbing down the steel stairs fast with as little sound as they can manage.

“That’s not mine yet by the way.”

“ _Yet_?”

“What, you think I can afford that kind of thing right now? As if.”

But when they reach the bike, there’s a fire in Debbie’s eyes, and had this woman been anyone else, Debbie would have kissed her, but this woman is different somehow so Debbie doesn’t. Debbie smiles instead, and the woman meets her gaze with a smile of her own. A foot feels like only a few inches, until the woman hops on the motorcycle with Debbie following suit, and once again, Debbie fits herself behind the woman like a puzzle falling into place.

The woman drops Debbie off at that same bridge, and they go off in exactly the same directions they did those five or six years ago.

* * *

Debbie’s at a casino some seven years later when she meets familiar silver eyes from across the table.

A smirk in those eyes despite a frown on those lips, and Debbie knew.

“Deal.” The cards are dealt and Debbie keeps her eyes from meeting those silver ones. What a game to be played, she thinks, and what other way would she play it? _Would_ she even play it if someone else had asked her? Debbie thinks no, probably not, mostly because that would run the risk of being conned back.

Though she’d have a way to get back at whoever thinks they can con Debbie Ocean, of all people.

Somewhere in the world, her brother’s turning into a mastermind.

They’re already quite notorious. Time will only tell when they’ll be talked as legends than passing famous criminals.

She plays her cards, and slips a few tricks from her sleeves, and under her table. They never suspect her; they never suspect a woman. And as beautiful as she is, they usually only think her eyes and smile ask for another man to warm her bed.

The cards are played and she smiles, eyes glancing every now and then to each player, lingering only the slightest bit on a head of blonde hair.

Her wig is as blonde as the woman’s hair; she wonders what the woman makes of it.

Bets are made and cards dropped and drawn; no one spares her a glance when she makes her move. But, she doesn’t let herself win the bets.

“I guess I win.” The smooth, velvet voice claims, and men being men, they trust her judgement, matching it up to good luck. They all give their share, and the men stay and flirt awhile, but they see that her interest is in nothing but her winnings, her eyes gleaming as if to say she doesn’t need anyone to warm her bed.

As if to say she already has someone to warm it.

Debbie slips a piece of paper between the bills she hands over.

“Nice game.” Debbie says, and the silver eyes laugh.

“Nice indeed.” The Australian accent leaks through, and Debbie remembers a night when she had been rebellious and self-absorbed, drinking a bottle of vodka and finding herself alone on a rooftop with a blonde Australian stranger.

When Debbie walks away, she remembers the taste of honey and leather.

* * *

They meet the next night on the bridge where they had twice parted ways.

“If we’re going to do this more often, I’ll need to know your name.” Debbie’s eyes are trained to the skyline, a sight only lending its beauty to the night. Debbie doesn’t need to wonder to know the woman who huffs, who leans pushes her elbows on the railings, who leans her back on the bannister, whose eyes are on the opposite end of the river lent her beauty and expertise neither to the day nor to the night.

“If we’re going to do this more often, we’ll need to stop running into each other like this.” Debbie looks to her side where she meets silver eyes. The woman slips a paper into Debbie’s jacket pocket, and maybe those pale lips really do mean to get too close for comfort, but Debbie likes them this close. The woman lets out a breath, and Debbie feels it on her lips.

“My name’s Lou. Lou Miller.”

“Debbie. Debbie Ocean.”


End file.
